"There is a rule in the science fiction and fantasy milieu or at least there ought to be that these types of properties should never, ever set any of the action in our own solar system. With the notable exception of Alien: Earth, which cleverly reframes the franchise's xenomorphs as little more than fluffy house cats compared with humanity's own talent for self-destruction, it is almost always a terrible idea."
"And then there was the 1987 big-screen adaptation of Masters of the Universe, which somehow decided to send Nordic lunk Dolph Lundgren to LA before audiences had even finished adjusting to the idea of him being He-Man at all as if the true stuff of epic fantasy was not skull-faced castles, cosmic sorcery and men built like exploded anatomy textbooks, but shopping malls, car parks and the vague promise of a California food court."
"If you've ever watched the early-80s He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, you'll be well aware that it may be the most psychedelic children's programme ever smuggled on to afternoon television without a warning label. In one episode, He-Man descends into a surreal underworld of floating platforms, warped gravity and abstract peril, where spatial logic collapses entirely. In another, Skeletor rules a nightmarish shared dreamworld, in which everyone on the planet is trapped, as a sort of bony, mad god."
A prevailing norm warns against placing science fiction and fantasy action inside the solar system because it diminishes imaginative scope and scale. Alien: Earth serves as a rare exception that highlights human self-destruction over alien threat. Examples like Galactica 1980 and later Lexx seasons illustrate how grounding space opera in the solar system can shrink its grandeur. The 1987 Masters of the Universe film transplanted epic fantasy elements into Los Angeles, replacing mythic settings with malls and car parks and thereby undermining the genre's cosmic tone. The original He-Man series featured surreal, dreamlike worlds and collective hallucination that belong beyond mundane locales.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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